Categories and Subject Descriptors K.8.0 [Personal Computing]: General - Games Keywords Videogames, game reviews, understanding games, reviews 1. INTRODUCTION Game reviews are one of the primary forms of videogame journalism. Andy McNamara, editor-in-chief of Game Informer Magazine, recently commented at the 2008 Game Developer’s Conference that the purpose of game reviews is to help consumers by leading them to games that make them happy (2008). His words echo the purpose, or role, that game reviews attempt to fulfill, namely inform the reader so that he or she may make a decision of whether or not to purchase or play the game reviewed. From this perspective, game reviews can be considered as consumer advice. In fact, Stuart argues that most game magazines are structured in such away to guide the reader through to purchasing a game (2005). The reason for this is that presumably most readers seem to see magazines as buying guides and little else. They want to know what they’ll be able to buy in the future, and what’s worth buying now (Stuart 2005). Game reviews often overshadow other forms of journalistic discourse surrounding games such as news, investigative reporting, and commentary (Thomas 2007). Reviews have also been maligned fora variety of reasons such as being inconsistent in writing and style (Thomas, Orland et al. 2007), or being rife with grammatical errors, historical inaccuracies, plagiarism, run on sentences, and clichés” (Buffa b. They have also been accused of failing to take a critical and analytical viewpoint (Costikyan 2008). Another accusation is that reviews don’t explain what playing a particular game feels like and that they don’t analyze what a game means outside the game itself (Klostermann 2006). Despite the controversy surrounding their quality or importance, game reviews are undoubtedly an influence on the ways that people view, understand and talk about games. Ina prior study, Zagal and Bruckman found that students taking videogame- related classes at the university level had difficulties expressing ideas about gameplay or articulating their experience with games (2007). They argue that a possible explanation for this lies in the fact that most of what students read about games are videogame reviews, and that they are thus generally lacking in models of what in-depth analysis or critique about games look like. However, what are game reviews like How can we characterize them How do game reviews talk about games and what things do they talk about Is the professional game designer Ernest Adams essentially correct when he says that reviews only compare games to other games they don’t analyze games in their larger cultural context (Friedl 2002)? These are some of the questions we explored by analyzing and deconstructing a large number of game reviews. Our goal was not to determine whether game reviews are good or bad, comment on the quality of their writing, or consider whether or not they are effective for guiding purchasing decisions. Rather, we aimed to get a sense of the kinds of things that appear, or are routinely discussed, in games reviews in order to better understand how these may shape our understanding of games and the discourse surrounding their use.
